Friday, January 11, 2008

572. A Voyage Across Oceanus Librarius - William Wehrmeister

.Open the book slowly, to the first paragraph,and you are on the promenade deck, hangingover the railing and looking down at travelersas they board with their boxes and suitcases,the excited clatter drowned by the ship'swhistle blaring, and then, the gangplank drawn,the bow points out the bay to the ocean,and the deck rises to the first great wavesarriving from two thousand miles away, andthere is the sharp bitter tang of the salt air.

Where it goes, you think you know, but todayit floats by strange mazes in the deep greenof the Amazon, where red painted Jivaros stareout, and vivid parrots scream in the treed canopy.Around several furious bends, the sudden roarof a thundering waterfall with vortexed eddies,and pulling into a sandy safe landing, the riveris silenced by the galaxy as it wheels overhead,in the soft darkness of the empty quarter of Arabia,two hundred miles from the nearest town.

There is the sudden shriek of a great haboob,and sand blots out all vision, and the amber gritclogs the nostrils and the folds of the Keffiyeh.Clearing at dawn, the sun glares on the roadsof a crowded city, where people, dressed in Saris,emerge from trains onto streets, and immerse us inthe huge floods of a dusty population, whileyou hang precipitously, hacking steps on thesteep wall of an ice blue glacier, the chipsfalling away thousands of feet into nothingness,into the sweaty depths of a Parisian kitchen,clogging debris laden sinks while great chefs swearvile imprecations at a clumsily dropped pan.

Outside on the crowded streets, the great towers ofShanghai sheer upwards over limos and taxis,bicycles weave fearlessly in and out, underneaththe white statue of Christ which rises above the blue linedbeaches, while the flashing dancers of Rio sambathrough the sidewalk revelers of Mardi Gras,next to the black hooded Penitentes of Spain.The throng parts to make way for the camels,as they plod softly across the Steppes of CentralAsia, the snow capped Pamirs overhead,while the minaret spires of Haga Sophia stareout over the Bosphorus, echoing the prayersof the Hassidic Jews at the Wailing Wall.

A ferry’s white wake is in the distance, bearingescapees to Alcatraz, island of Pelicans,surrounded by the sun shimmering summer of thegreat California valley, from the center of whichno hill, no tree, only the same unending green.A bulky Eskimo lurches through the chest high plants,hurling his spear at a seal on an ice floe, at the edgeof a deep unknown valley of New Guinea, wherea Papuan turns his face upward, hearing the churrchurr kyong, to see the flash of orange wings.What’s that? says the dentist, “You’re still feeling pain?”His large needle is poised once again over our gapingmouth, as we stare upward at the great comet, it’s tailstretching from horizon to zenith, while Mars flauntsit’s flaming red, and the four planets of Jupitercast orbed shadows over the equatorial belts,and Saturn's rings float arching overhead.